[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:19, said:

To be honest I'm not sure. And now that I think of it, I believe I mis-remembered the amount. It was not half a billion, it was half a trillion.

Added: I just did a web search and came up with about 8.6 billion for an Abrams, so we're talking about something like 50 tanks or so.

That can't be right. A submarine doesn't cost that much.

[helene_t]

6.21 million:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

but this answer is more entertaining:

http://answers.yahoo...04053944AAK8mOe

[blackshoe]

Apparently I picked the wrong website from which to gather data. From an article in the Huffington post, five days ago, an upgraded Abrams costs $7.5 million. It's not clear whether that's the cost of the upgrade on an existing tank, or the cost for a whole new tank. The article mentions that the company has lost roughly 2/3 of its revenue over the past couple of years. This seems a clearcut case of "corporate welfare" and while I don't like the way the term is often used, I don't think the government should be in the business of shoring up any business, even those who regard themselves as "too big to fail".

[FM75]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:19, said:

To be honest I'm not sure. And now that I think of it, I believe I mis-remembered the amount. It was not half a billion, it was half a trillion.

Added: I just did a web search and came up with about 8.6 billion for an Abrams, so we're talking about something like 50 tanks or so.

Innumeracy is so sad.

[blackshoe]

Yes it is. I'm sorry if you have problems with arithmetic. Perhaps you should seek help.

[hrothgar]

One important note: It's very difficult to ascribe a unit cost to low volume weapons systems like tanks or planes.

Generally, the fixed cost of developing the platform dominates the variable cost of producing an individual tank.
In a similar vein, the fixed cost of keeping a production line open for a year is often much more significant than the cost of producing a jet.

As a result, the cost of "one" tank can vary dramatically across the life time of a project.

[dwar0123]

blackshoe, on 2013-May-03, 14:49, said:

Yes it is. I'm sorry if you have problems with arithmetic. Perhaps you should seek help.

Your arithmetic is off by several orders of magnitude, yet you .... Are you being snarky about your own mistake? Or are you intentionally trying to deceive others that you just didn't make this mistake or are you truly still unaware of it?

I can't decide which is the most likely, but the last is clearly the funniest. Regardless, they all show a deep lack of awareness.

[blackshoe]

My mistake had nothing to do with arithmetic.

[dwar0123]

blackshoe, on 2013-May-03, 16:47, said:

My mistake had nothing to do with arithmetic.

I'd say only you could rationalize this in such a way as to believe that your mistake had nothing to do with numbers but that isn't true. Still sad though.

Everyone makes mistakes, some have the humility to admit them and move on, others dig a bottomless pit of humiliation and move in.

[Scarabin]

dwar0123, on 2013-May-03, 16:55, said:

I'd say only you could rationalize this in such a way as to believe that your mistake had nothing to do with numbers but that isn't true. Still sad though.

Everyone makes mistakes, some have the humility to admit them and move on, others dig a bottomless pit of humiliation and move in.

As I see it: Blackshoe fully admitted his mistake - FM75 made a comment, some way between uncalled for and snide - Blackshoe turned the comment back on its author. I do not understand your problem?

[onoway]

Latest word I heard about the bombers was that nobody will allow the body of the one brother to be buried in "their" cemetery. Have to feel some sympathy for the funeral director! I understand bitterness and anger but this strikes me as being both silly and irreligious. As far as that goes, why don't they cremate him if nobody will accept the body? Anyone know?

[dwar0123]

Scarabin, on 2013-May-03, 23:01, said:

As I see it: Blackshoe fully admitted his mistake - FM75 made a comment, some way between uncalled for and snide - Blackshoe turned the comment back on its author. I do not understand your problem?

Fully admitted?

The only thing approaching the admission of a mistake was stating that he might have picked the wrong website to get his data from. That isn't an admission so much as blaming someone else and its uselessly vague about what mistake he is referring too. But lets assume it is about the 8 billion dollar tanks, is there an actual website that states that tanks cost 8 billion each? Or that the overall cost was half a trillion for 50 tanks?

[FM75]

My comment about innumeracy was not just about the poster that did not comprehend the difference between a half a trillion and a half a billion. (Being off by 3 decimal orders of magnitude is pretty inexcusable for earthly things - IMO - half a deck of cards should be about 26 cards, not 26,000)

It was a comment about all people for whom that is a problem. The inability to understand large numbers is one reason why far too many do not understand things like a national budget, or gross domestic product, or think that converting an automobile engine to run on cooking oil is scalable to a population.

Numeracy is like literacy. There are degrees. It is not the same as counting or arithmetic. If someone posted a story about getting a cheeseburger at the local fast food joint for only $5000, almost everybody (adults) familiar with the value of a dollar - and a cheeseburger - (but not people for whom that currency is totally foreign) would immediately think the poster was nuts (not innumerate - since that is not usually considered). Yet, this difference was completely like the discussion of tanks. To be numerate, one must understand that large numbers are not innately understood. They need to be scaled in some fashion to differentiate - to something on a scale that is meaningful. Perhaps it would involve a per capita computation - dividing a large number by another large number, and seeing if the result was credible.

90 factorial is an interesting number. It is simple to understand that it is the number of ways that 90 things could be ordered. You can "google" it to see a good approximation of it. But to truly understand the number you probably have to imagine something like needing all possible orderings. The estimated number of atoms in the universe is something on the order of 10 to the 78 to 80th power ( 3 orders of magnitude), and imagine that each one could independently generate orderings in a microsecond. Then figure out how many years it would take all of the atoms of the universe to work out the possibilities.

[hrothgar]

FM75, on 2013-May-06, 14:51, said:

My comment about innumeracy was not just about the poster that did not comprehend the difference between a half a trillion and a half a billion. (Being off by 3 decimal orders of magnitude is pretty inexcusable for earthly things - IMO - half a deck of cards should be about 26 cards, not 26,000)

I assumed it was a typo...

[blackshoe]

onoway, on 2013-May-06, 12:20, said:

Latest word I heard about the bombers was that nobody will allow the body of the one brother to be buried in "their" cemetery. Have to feel some sympathy for the funeral director! I understand bitterness and anger but this strikes me as being both silly and irreligious. As far as that goes, why don't they cremate him if nobody will accept the body? Anyone know?

IIRC, there's a religious objection to cremation, being he's Muslim.

[Scarabin]

Dwar0123 and FM75 thanks for reasoned replies to my comparatively shallow comments. In my simple world:

reference to my mistake constitutes admission of mistake. Dwar0123 post perhaps questions veracity?

similarly illiteracy = inability to read or write and innumeracy = inability to handle numbers ie arithmetic. FM75 post seems to question comprehension?

Anyhow thanks for explanations, I tend to over-react when I think posters are ganging-up on a single poster.

[barmar]

onoway, on 2013-May-06, 12:20, said:

Latest word I heard about the bombers was that nobody will allow the body of the one brother to be buried in "their" cemetery. Have to feel some sympathy for the funeral director!

One of the reports I heard said he was trying to raise funds to get him sent back to Russia, although he's not sure they'll take him, either.

[FM75]

barmar, on 2013-May-07, 10:32, said:

One of the reports I heard said he was trying to raise funds to get him sent back to Russia, although he's not sure they'll take him, either.

It is easy to understand that no cemetery would take him. For that matter, it is easy to understand that you would need to be paid a lot of money to bury him in your front or back yard.

But with enough money, his body might be laid to rest along side Bin Laden. For far less - one might be able to charter a boat from a local fisherman.

[kenberg]

I think when someone is dead we should bury him. Religious views should be respected within reason. By which I mean if his religion forbids cremation we should try hard to avoid it, and if we try hard we should be able to succeed. However if his religion requires some complicated ceremony he should have arranged for it himself, that's not our responsibility. As with many such things, I think this is not so much doing something for him as respecting out own standards.

I would think there is someplace paupers are buried, with more or less no questions asked. I have not actually been following it, but I try to keep things simple. I believe dead people should be buried, I see no reason to think further about it.An unadvertised burial in an unmarked grave for security reasons would be fine. That we should do, as part of our own standards. Not more, not less.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2013-May-07, 16:09, said:

I think when someone is dead we should bury him. Religious views should be respected within reason. By which I mean if his religion forbids cremation we should try hard to avoid it, and if we try hard we should be able to succeed.

I'm completely disgusted by all the protests involving the (potential) burial and the decision of a funeral home to embalm the body.
I had hoped for better from the people around here.

Sadly, a bunch of yahoos figured out that they could get on TV by yelling at the funeral home.
At this rate, we'll have the Westboro Baptist Church showing up...